Distribution List

A distribution list (also called a distribution group or DL) is an Exchange-side address that fans out mail to its members' personal inboxes. There's no shared storage or workspace — each member receives their own copy. Two flavours: mail-enabled security groups that also grant permissions to resources, and plain distribution lists that are mail-only. Dynamic distribution groups compute membership from a query at send time. For collaborative work (chat, files, shared meeting), prefer a Microsoft 365 Group; for shared inboxes, prefer a shared mailbox. DLs remain useful for broadcast announcements where each recipient should get their own copy.

Worked example

HR needs to email a company-wide policy update to all 300 employees, each of whom should receive their own individual copy in their personal inbox with no shared thread or shared folder involved. A distribution list called "All Staff" is exactly the right tool: HR sends one message to the DL address, Exchange fans it out to all 300 individual mailboxes, and there's no shared storage, no membership to manage beyond adding and removing names as people join and leave, and no confusion about who can see what — unlike a Microsoft 365 Group, which would also spin up a shared mailbox, SharePoint site, and Teams presence nobody asked for.

Common pitfalls

Reaching for a distribution list when the real need is a shared mailbox — a team inbox like support@company.com where messages should be visible to and actionable by the whole team, not delivered as 300 separate personal copies — is a common mismatch that becomes obvious the first time someone asks "did anyone reply to this yet" and nobody can tell. Using a plain distribution list to also try to grant folder or resource permissions doesn't work — only mail-enabled security groups carry permissions, and a plain DL is mail-only by design. And letting DL membership go stale, with departed employees still receiving company-wide announcements or, worse, external partners left on internal lists long after a project ended, is a routine and easily overlooked governance gap.